The invention relates to an impermeable operating drape that includes a window through which the operating physician is able to access the operating site and to insert a tube or a wire into the body, possibly extended by a transfusion line or other line that must remain in position when the drape has to be removed.
In order to remove the drape despite the presence of the tube of the wire or of the line that is passing through the window, it is conventional to cut the drape by means of an instrument, or to tear the drape at the appropriate moment of its removal, until the window has been opened laterally, and these operations complicate the work of the operating physician, and constitute a risk for the tube, the wire or the line.
In order to facilitate these operations, it has been proposed that the drape should be equipped with tearing or cutting slits, as described in publication EP 1 009 318 for example.
These measures facilitate the division of the drape to a limited degree only, and do not eliminate the risks.
The present invention aims to enable easy and reliable removal of the drape without the use of a tool and without resorting to a tearable material for the constitution of the drape.
Publication WO 99/16377 described drapes with a window in which tear-lines are placed leading to the window and that are used to tear the drape in order to adapt it more easily to the shape of the face, and in particular of the eyebrows and eyelids, since it concerns a drape employed in ophthalmology.
The publication explains that these lines are composed of perforations or indentations or weakening of the sheet. In fact, the only method actually described is the cutting of perforations with a rotary cutter.
The problem of the present invention is to create a drape with a window for the operation, and to be able to separate it into two parts in order to remove it despite the tubes corning out from the operating site via the window and connected to appliances.
A drape with a pre-cut tear strip can allow this separation to occur, but it is not impermeable around the operating site. However it must be so because of questions of possible infections.
Indentations or a thermal weakening make the drape tearable, and favour the accidental formation of perforations.
The present invention is used to create impermeability without weakening the sheet, and to divide the sheet in two without the aid of a cutting tool.